Three Concepts of the
Russian Revolution

(August
1939)

The Revolution of 1905 came to be not only the "general rehearsal" of 1917
but also the laboratory in which all the fundamental groupings of Russian
political life were worked out and all the tendencies and shadings inside
Russian Marxism were projected. At the core of the arguments and
divergences was, needless to say, the question concerning the historical
nature of the Russian Revolution and its future course of development.
That conflict of concepts and prognoses has no direct bearing on the biography
of Stalin, who did not participate in it in his own right. The few propagandist
articles he wrote on that subject are utterly devoid of theoretical interest.
Scores of Bolsheviks who plied the pen popularized the same thoughts, and
did it considerably better. Any critical exposition of Bolshevism's revolutionary
concepts naturally belongs in a biography of Lenin. But theories
have their own fate. Although during the period of the First Revolution
and subsequently, as late as 1923, at the time when the revolutionary doctrines
were elaborated and applied, Stalin had no independent position whatever,
a sudden change occurred in 1924, which opened an epoch of bureaucratic
reaction and radical transvaluation of the past. The film of the revolution
was unwound in reverse order. Old doctrines were subjected either to a
new evaluation or a new interpretation. Thus, rather unexpectedly at first
glance, attention was focused on the concept of "permanent revolution"
as the prime source of all the fallacies of "Trotskyism." For many years
to come criticism of that concept formed the main content of all the theoretical
 sit venio verbo  writings of Stalin and his collaborators. Since
on the theoretical plane every bit of "Stalinism" has issued from the criticism
of the theory of permanent revolution as it was formulated in 1905, an
exposition of that theory as distinct from the theories of the Mensheviks
and the Bolsheviks, clearly belongs in this book, if only as an appendix.

Russia's development is first of all notable for its backwardness. But
historical backwardness does not mean a mere retracing of the course of
the advanced countries a hundred or two hundred years late. Rather, it
gives rise to an utterly different "combined" social formation, in which
the most highly developed achievements of capitalist technique and structure
are integrated into the social relations of feudal and pre-feudal barbarism,
transforming and dominating them, fashioning a unique relationship of classes.
The same is true of ideas. Precisely because of its historical tardiness,
Russia proved to be the only European country in which Marxism, as a doctrine,
and the Social-Democracy, as a party, enjoyed a powerful development even
prior to the hourgeois revolution  and naturally so, because the problem
of the relation hetween the struggle for democracy and the struggle for
socialism were subjected to the most profound theoretical examination in
Russia.

The idealistic democrats  for the most part, the Populists  superstitiously
refused to recognize the advancing revolution as a bourgeois revobution.
They called it "democratic," attempting to hide under that neutral polirical
label  not only from others, but from themselves as well  its social
content But Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism, in his fight against
Populism, showed as far back as the eighties of the past century that Russia
had no reason whatsoever to rely on preferential ways of development; that,
like the "profane" nations, it would have to go through the purgatoory
of capitalism ; and that on this very path it wouldl wrest political freedlom,
which was indispensabhe to the proletariat in its continuing fight for
socialism. Plekhanov not only segregated the bourgeois revolution, as the
imediate task, fron the socialist revolution, which he in turn relegated
to the vague future, but he foresaw distinct combinations of forces for
each of them. The proletariat would secure political freedom jointly with
the liberal bourgeoisie; then, after many decades, on a high level of capitalist
development, the proletariat would proceedl with the socialist revolution
in direct conflict against the bourgeoisie.

"To the Russian intellectual...," Lenin wrote toward the end of 1904,
"it always seems that to recognize our revolution as bourgeois means to
make it colorless, to humiliate it, to vulgarize it. ... The struggle for
political freedom and the democratic republic in bourgeois society is to
the proletarian merely one of the necessary stages in the struggle for
the social revolution" "The Marxists are thoroughly convinced," he wrote
in 1905, "of the bourgeois character of the Russian Revolution. What does
that mean? It means that those democratic transformations... which became
indispensable for Russia, not only do not signify in themselves the undermining
of capitalism, the undermining of the domination of the bourgeoisie, but,
on the contrary, they will be the first to really clear the ground for
a widespread and rapid, a European rather than an Asiatic, development
of capitalism; they will be the first to make possible the rule of the
bourgeoisie as a class." "We cannot jump out of the bourgeois-democratic
framework of the Russian Revolution," he insisted, "but we can considerably
broaden that framework"  that is, create within the bourgeois society
more favorable conditions for the further struggle of the proletariat.
To that extent Lenin followed in the footsteps of Plekhanov. The bourgeois
character of the revolution, was the meeting of the crossroads for the
two factions of the Russian Social-Democracy.

Under these circumstances it was quite natural that in his propaganda
Koba should not have ventured beyond those popular formulae which formed
the common heritage of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. "The Constituent Assembly,
elected on the basis of universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage,"
wrote he in January, 1905, "is what we should now fight for! Only such
an assembly will give us a democratic republic, extremely necessary to
us in our struggle for socialism." The bourgeois republic as the arena
of a prolonged class struggle for the sociaIist objective  such was the
perspective. In 1907 that is, after countless discussions in the foreign
and the Petersburg press, and after the earnest verification of theoretical
prognoses by the experience of the First Revolution, Stalin wrote : "That
our Revolution is bourgeois, that it must end with the demolition of serfdom
and not of the capitalist order, that it can be crowned only by a democratic
republic  on that, it seems, everybody in our Party is agreed." Stalin
was not speaking of what the Revolution was to begin with, but of what
it would end with, limiting it beforehand, and rather categorically, to
"only a democratic republic." In vain would we seek in his writings of
those days for as much as a hint about the perspective of the socialist
revolution in connection with the democratic insurrection. Such was to
remain his position as late as the beginning of the February Revolution
of 1917, until Lenin' s very arrival in Petrograd.

For Plekhanov, Axelrod, and the leaders of Menshevism generally the
characterization of the revolution as bourgeois had, above all, the political
value of avoiding the premature taunting of the bourgeoisie with the red
specter of socialism and thus "frightening it away" into the camp of reaction.
"The social relations of Russia have ripened only for a bourgeois revolution,"
said Axelrod, the chief tactician of Menslevism. at the Unification Congress.
"While this general political lawlessness persists, we must not even so
much as mention the direct fight of the proletariat against other classes
for political power. ... It is fighting for the conditions of bourgeois
development. Objective historical conditions doom our proletariat to an
inevitahle collaboration with the bourgeoisie in the struggle against our
common enemy." The content of the Russian Revolution was thus confined
beforehand to changes that were compatible with the interests and the views
of the liberal bourgeoisie.

This was the starting point for the fundamental divergence between the
two factions. Bolshevism resolutely refused to acknowledge that the Russian
bourgeoisie was capable of consummating its own revolution. With immeasurably
greater force and consistency than Plekhanov, Lenin advanced the agrarian
question as the central problem of the democratic revolution in Russia
: "The crux of the Russian Revolution is the agrarian (the land) question.
We must make up our minds about the defeat or victory of the revolution
... on the basis of accounting for the condition of the masses in their
struggle for land." At one with Plekhanov, Lenin regarded the peasantry
as a petty-bourgeois class and the peasant land program as the program
of bourgeois progressivism. "Nationalization is a bourgeois measure," he
insisted at the Unification Congress. "It will give impetus to the development
of capitalism by intensifying the class struggle, by strengthening the
mobilization of land and the investment of capital in agriculture, by lowering
the prices on grain." Notwithstanding the admitted bourgeois character
of the agrarian revolution, the Russian bourgeoisie was nevertheless hostile
to the expropriation of the land owned by the landed gentry, and precisely
for that reason strove for a compromise with the monarchy on the basis
of a constitution after the Prussian model. To the Plekhanovite idea of
union between the proletariat and the liberal bourgeoisie Lenin counterposed
the idea of union between the proletariat and the peasantry. He proclaimed
the task of the revolutionary collaboration of these two classes to be
the establishment of a "democratic dictatorship," as the only means for
radically purging Russia of its feudal refuse, creating a free class of
farmers and opening the way for the development of capitalism after the
American rather than the Prussian model.

The victory of the revolution, he wrote, can be attained "only through
dictatorship, because the realization of the transformations immediately
and unconditionally necessary for the proletariat and the peasantry will
call forth the desperate resistance of the landlords, of the big bourgeoisie
and of Tsarism. Without dictatorship it would be impossible to break that
resistance, it would be impossible to defeat counterrevolutionary efforts.
That would be, needless to say, not a socialist, but a democratic dictatorship.
It would not be able to dispose of (without a whole series of intermediary
stages in revolutionary development) the foundations of capitalism. At
best, it would be able to introduce a radical redistribution of land ownership
for the benefit of the peasantry, carry out a consistent and complete democratization,
including a republic; uproot all the oppressive Asiatic characteristics
in the life of the factory as well as the village; lay down the beginnings
of important improvements in the condition of the workers; raise their
standard of living; and finally, last but not least, carry the revolutionary
conflagration into Europe."

Lenin's conception represented a tremendous step forward, proceeding,
as it did, from the agrarian revolution rather than from constitutional
reforms as the central task of the revolution, and indicating the only
realistic combination of social forces that could fulfill that task. The
weak point of Lenin's concept was its inherently contradictory notion,
"the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry." Lenin
himself emphasized the basic limitations of that "dictatorship" when he
openly called it bourgeois. He was thus implying that, for
the sake of maintaining unity with the peasantry, the proletariat would
be obliged to forego posing the socialist task (directly during the impending
revolution. But that would have meant the repudiation by the proletariat
of its own dictatorship. The dictatorship was consequently, in essence,
of the peasantry, although with the workers participating. On certain occasions
that was precisely how Lenin spoke; for example, at the Stockholm Congress,
when he replied to Plekhanov, who had rebelled against the "utopia" of
seizing power: "What program are we talking about? About an agrarian program.
Who in that program is supposed to seize the government? The revolutionary
peasantry. Is Lenin confounding the government of the proletariat with
that of the peasantry?" No, he said with reference to himself: Lenin sharply
differentiated between the socialist government of the proletariat and
the bourgeois-democratic government of the peasantry. "And how is a victorious
peasant revolution possible," he exclaimed again, "without seizure of power
by the revolutionary peasantry?" In that polemical formulation Lenin very
clearly exposed the vulnerability of his position.

The peasantry was dispersed over tlne surface of an immense country,
with cities as points of contact. By itself the peasantry was incapable
even of formulating its own interests, for in each region they were differently
conceived. Economic contact between provinces was established by the market
and the railroads; but both the market and the railroad were ikn the city's
hands. In trying to break through the confines of the village and pool
their interests, the peasantry necessarily succumbed to political dependence
on the city. Neither was the peasantry homogeneous in its social relations
: its kulak stratum naturally strove to entice it to unite with the city
bourgeoisie, while the lower strata of the village pulled in the direction
of the city workers. Under these circumstances, the peasantry as a whole
was utterly incapahle of assuming the reins of government.

True, in ancient China revolutions brought the peasantry to power, or
rather, the military deaders of peasant insurrections. That led each time
to a redivision of the land and the establishment of a new "peasant" dynasty,
after which history began all over again: new concentration of lands, a
new aristocracy, new usury, new uprisings. So long as the revolution maintained
its purely peasant character, society did not emerge from these hopeless
rotations. Suchwas the basis of ancient Asiatic, including ancient Russian,
history. In Europe, beginning with the emergence of the Middde Ages, each
victorious peasant uprising did not place a peasant government in power
but a Leftist burgher party. More precisely, a peasant uprising proved
victorious only to the extent that it managed to establish the position
of the city population's revolutionary sector. Seizure of power by a revolutionary
peasantry was out of the question in twentieth-century bourgeois Russia.

The attitude toward the liberal bourgeoisie thus became the touchstone
in the divergence between revolutionists and opportunists among Social-Democrats.
How far the Russian Revodution could venture, what character would be assumed
by the future provisional revolutionary government, what tasks would confront
it, and in what order it would dispose of them  these questions could
be correctly posed in all their importance only in reference to the basic
character of the proletariat's politics, and that character was determined,
above all by its relation to the liberal bourgeoisie. Plekhanov demonstratively
and stubbornly shut his eyes to the fundamental object-lesson of nineteenth-century
political history: wherever the proletariat appeared as an independent
force, the bourgeoisie shifted to the camp of the counterrevolution.
The bolder the struggle of the masses, the quicker the reactionary transformation
of liberalism. No one has yet invented a way to paralyze the workings of
the law of the class struggle.

"We must prize the support of the non-proletarian parties," Plekhanov
was wont to repeat during the years of the First Revolution, "and not drive
them away from us by tactless behavior." With such monotonous moralizings
the sage of Marxism demonstrated that he was unable to grasp the living
dynamics of society. "Tactlessness" might drive away an occasional oversensitive
intellectual. But classes and parties are drawn or repelled by their social
intersts. "It may be safely said," Lenin retorted to Plekhanov, "that the
liberals among the landed gentry will forgive you millions of tactless'
acts, but they will never forgive incitements to take away their land."
And not only the landed gentry: the upper crust of the bourgeoisie, bound
to the landowners by identity of property interests and even more closely
by the banking system, as well as the upper crust of the petty-bourgeoisie
and of the intellectuals, materially and morally dependent on the large
and middling property owners, dreaded the imdependent movement of the masses.
Yet in order to overthrow Tsarism, it was necessary to arouse scores upon
scores of millions of the oppressed for a heroic, self-sacrificing, reckless,
supreme revolutionary onslaught. The masses could be aroused to this uprising
only under the banner of their own interests; hence, in the spirit of unreconcilable
hostility toward the exploiting classes, and first of all, the landlords.
The "frightening away" of the oppositional bourgeoisie from the revolutionary
peasants and workers was therefore the immanent law of the revolution itself
and could not be forestalled by "tactfulness" or diplomacy.

Each new month confirmed. Lenin's estimate of liberalism. Notwithstanding
the fondest hopes of the Mensheviks, the Kadets not only made no move to
lead the "bourgeois" revolution but, on the contrary, more and more found
their historic mission in fighting it. After the crushing defeat of the
December insurrection, the liberals, who, thanks to the ephemeral Duma,
stepped out before the political footlights, strove with all their might
to explain to the monarchy their insufficiently active counter-revolutionary
behavior in the autumn of 1905, when the holiest pillars of "culture" were
in danger The leader of the Liberals, Miliukov, who carried on sub rosa
negotiations with the Winter Palace, argued quite properIy in the press
that by the end of 1905 the Kadets were unable even to appear before the
masses. "Those who now blame the [Kadet] party," he wrote,"for not protesting
then, by convoking meetings, against the revolutionary illusions of Trotskyism
... simply do not understand or do not remember the moods then prevalent
among the democratic public that attended these meetings." By the "illusions
of Trotskyism" the liberal leader meant the independent policy of the proletariat,
which attracted to the Soviets the sympathies of the cities' lower
classes, soldiers, peasants and of all the oppressed, thus alienating "cultivated"
society. The evolution of the Mensheviks developed along parallel lines.
Time and again they had to alibi themselves to the liberals for having
found themselves in a bloc with Trotsky after October, 1905. The explanations
of that talented publicist of the Mensheviks, Martov, came to this  that
it was necessary to make concessions to the "revoIutionary illusions" of
the masses.

In Tiflis political groupings were formed on the same basis of principles
as in Petersburg. "The smashing of reaction," wrote the leader of the Caucasian
Mensheviks, Jordania, "the winning and attainment of the constitution 
will come from the conscious unification and single-minded direction of
all the forces of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. True, the peasantry
will be drawn into this movement and will invest it with the character
of a natural force; nevertheless, it is these two classes that will play
the decisive role, while the peasant movement will pour water on their
mill." Lenin made sport of Jordania's misgivings that an irreconcilable
policy toward the bourgeoisie might doom the workers to helplessness. Jordania
"discusses the question of a possible isolation of the proletariat in the
democratic imsurrection and forgets the peasantry. Of the possible
allies of the proletariat, he recognizes and takes delight in the landed
gentry of the county councils, but he does not recognize the peasants.
And that in the Caucasus!" Lenin's retort, essentially correct, oversimplified
the question on one point. Jordania did not "forget" the peasantry, and,
as is evident from Lenin's own hint, could not have possibly forgotten
it in the Caucasus, where it was then stormily rising under the banner
of the Mensheviks. But Jordania saw the peasantry not so much as a political
ally as a political battering ram which the bourgeoisie could and should
utilize in union with the proletariat. He did not believe that the peasantry
could beeome a leading or even an independent force of the revolution,
and in that he was not wrong; but neither did he believe that the proletariat
could secure the victory of the peasant uprisirg in the role of leader
 and in that was his fatal error. The Menshevik idea of union between
the proletariat and the the bourgeoisie actually meant submission of the
workers as well as the peasants to the liberals. The reactionary utopianism
of that program proceeded from the fact that the far-gone dismemberment
of the classes paralyzed the bourgeoisie from the start as a revolutionary
factor. In that fundamental question Bolshevism was right: the quest
of union with the liberal bourgeoisie was perforce driving the Social-Democracy
into the camp opposed to the revolutionary movement of the workers and
peasants. In 1905 the Mensheviks merely lacked the courage to draw all
the necessary inferences from their theory of "bourgeois" revolution. In
1917, pursuing their ideas to the bitter end, they broke their neck.

On the question of attitude toward the liberals Stalin sided with Lenin
during the years of the First Revolution. It must be said that in that
period, when it was a question of the oppositionist bourgeoisie, even a
majority of the rank and file Mensheviks found themselves closer to Lenin
than to Plekhanov. A disdainful attitude toward liberals was a literary
tradition of intellectual radicalism. But it would be utterly useless to
look for an independent contribution of Koba's on that question, be it
an analysis of social relations in the Caucasus or new arguments, or even
so much as a new formulation of old arguments. Jordania, leader of the
Caucasian Mensheviks, was incomparably more independent of Plekhanov than
Stalin was of Lenin. "In vain do the Messieurs Liberals try," wrote Koba
after Bloody Sunday, "to save the tottering throne of the Tsar. In vain
do they proffer the hand of succor to the Tsar! ... The agitated masses
of people are getting ready for revolution, not for conciliation with the
Tsar...Yes, gentlemen, vain are your efforts! The Russian Revolution is
unavoidable, as unavoidable as the sunrise! Can you stop the rising sun?
 that is the question!" and so forth. Koba could not fly higher than that.
Two and a half years later, repeating Lenin's words almost literally, he
wrote: "The Russian liberal bourgeoisie is anti-revolutionary. it cannot
be the propeller, much less the leader, of the revolution; it is
the sworn enemy of the revolution; and against it a persistent struggle
must be waged." It was on that fundamentaI issue that Stalin passed through
a complete metamorphosis during the ensuing ten years, so that he greeted
the February Revolution of 1917 as a supporter of the bloc with the liberal
bourgeoisie, and, in consonance with that, as the herald of fusion with
the Mensheviks into one party. Only Lenin, upon arrival from abroad, sharply
terminated Stalin's independent policy, which he called a mockery of Marxism.

Populists regarded all workers and peasants as simply "toilers" and
"exploited ones," who were equally interested in socialism, while to Marxists
a peasant was a petty-bourgeois, capable of becoming a socialist only to
the extent that he either materially or spiritually ceased being a peasant.
With a sentimentality characteristic of them, Populists saw in that sociological
characterization a dire insult to the peasantry Along that line was fought
for two generations the principal battle between the revolutionary tendencies
of Russia. In order to understand the subsequent conflict between Stalinism
and Trotskyism, it is necessary to emphasize that, in consonance with all
Marxist tradition, Lenin never regarded the peasant as a socialist ally
of the proletariat; on the contrary, it was the overwhelming preponderance
of the peasantry which had led Lenin to conclude that a socialist revolution
was impossible in Russia. That idea recurs time and again in all his articles
that directly or indirectly touch upon the agrarian question.

"We support the peasant movement," wrote Lenin in September, 1905, "in
so far as it is revolutionary and democratic. We are preparing (at once,
immediately preparing) to fight against it in so far as it asserts itseif
as a reactionary anti-proletarian movement. The whole essence of Marxism
is in that twofold task. ..." Lenin saw the Western proletariat and to
some extent the semi-proletarians of the Russian village as socialist allies,
but never the whole of the peasantry. "At first, we support to the very
end, with all means, including confiscation," he repeated with persistence
typical of him, "the peasant in general against the landed proprietor,
but later (and not even later, but at the very same time) we support the
proletariat against the peasant in general."

"The peasantry will win in a bourgeois democratic revolution," he wrote
in March, 1906, "and thereby will completely exhaust its revolutionism
as a peasantry. The proletariat will win in a bourgeois democratic revolution,
and thereby will only begin really to unfold its true socialist revolutionism."
"The movement of the peasantry," he repeated in May of the same year, "is
the movement of another class; it is a struggle not against the foundations
of capitalism but for their purging of all the remnants of serfdom." That
view may be traced in Lenin from article to article, from year to year,
from volume to volume. Expressions and illustrations vary, but the basic
thought is unalterable. Nor could it have been otherwise. Had Lenin seen
a socialist ally in the peasantry, he would not have had the slightest
basis for insisting upon the bourgeois character of the revolution
and limiting it to "the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry,"
to purely democratic tasks. On the occasions when Lenin accused me
of "underestimating" the peasantry, he did not have in mind my failure
to recognize the socialist tendencies of the peasantry but
rather my failure to realize sufficiently, from Lenin's point of view,
the bourgeois-democratic independence of the peasantry, its capacity to
create its own power and through it impede the establishment
of the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat.

The revaluation of that question commenced only during the years of
the thermidorian reaction, the beginning of which coincided by and large
with Lenin's illness and death. From then on the union of Russian workers
and peasants was declared to be in itself sufficient guaranty against the
dangers of restoration and a firm pledge that socialism would be achieved
within the borders of the Soviet Union. Having substituted the theory of
socialism in a separate country for the theory of international revolution,
Stalin began to call the Marxist evaluation of the peasantry "Trotskyism,"
and moreover not only with reference to the present but retroactively to
the entire past.

It is, of course, possible to ask whether the classical Marxist view
of the peasantry had not proved erroneous. That theme would lead us far
beyond the limits of this appendix. Suffice it to say for the nonce that
Marxism never ascribed an absolute and immutable character to its estimation
of the peasantry as a non-socialist class. Marx said long ago that the
peasant is capable of judgment as well as prejudgment. The very nature
of the peasantry is altered under altered conditions. The régime
of the dictatorship of the proletariat discovered very great possibilities
for influencing the peasantry and for re-educating it. History has not
yet plumbed to the bottom the limits of these possibilities. But it is
already clear that the growing role of state compulsion in the U.S.S.R.,
far fron refuting, has basically confirmed the very view of the peasantry
that distinguished Russian Marxists from Populists. Yet, whatever the situation
on that score today after twenty-odd years of the new régime, the
fact remains that prior to the October Revolution, or rather prior to the
year 1924, no one in the Marxist camp, and least of all Lenin, had regarded
the peasantry as a factor of socialist development. Without the aid of
a proletarian revolution in the West, he reiterated time and again, restoration
is unavoidable in Russia. He was not mistaken : the Stalinist bureaucracy
is nothing else than the first stage of bourgeois restoration.

Such were the divergent positions of the two main factions of the Russian
Social-Democracy But alongside them, as early as the dawn of the First
Revolution, a third position was formulated, which met with practically
no recognition in those days, but which we must explain  not only because
it was confirmed by the events of 1917, but particularly because seven
years after the Revolution, after being turned upside down, it began to
play an utterly unforeseen role in the political evolution of Stalin and
of the entire Soviet bureaucracy.

Early in 1905 I published in Geneva a pamphlet which analyzed the political
situation as it existed around the winter of 1904. I came to the conclusion
that the independent campaign of liberal petitions and banquets had exhausted
its possibilities: that the radical intellectuals, who had shifted their
hopes to the liberals, had found themselves in a blind alley together with
the latter; that the peasant movement was creating conditions favorable
for victory yet incapable of assuring it; that the showdown could be brought
about only through an armed insurrection of the proletariat; that the very
next stage along that way must be the general strike. This pamphlet called,
"Until the Ninth of January," had been written prior to the Bloody Sunday
in Petersburg. The powerful wave of strikes which began that day, together
with the first armed clashes that supplemented it, was an unequivocal confirmation
of the pamphlet's strategic prognosis.

The preface to my work was written by Parvus, a Russian emigré,
who had already become by then a prominent German writer. Parvus's was
an extraordinarily creative personality, capable of becoming infected with
the ideas of others as well as enriching others with his ideas. He lacked
the inward balance anrl application necessary to contribute anything worthy
of his talents as a thinker and writer to the labor movement. There is
no doubt that he exerted considerable influence on my personal development,
especially with respect to the social-revolutionary understanding of our
epoch. A few years before our first meeting Parvus passionately defended
the idea of a general strike in Germany, but the country was passing through
prolonged industrial prosperity, the Social-Democracy was adjusting itself
to the Hohenzollern régime, and foreigner's revolutionary propaganda
met nothing but ironical indifference. Having read my pamphlet in manuscript,
the very next day after the bloody events in Petersburg, Parvus was overwhelmed
with the thought of the exceptional role which the proletariat of backward
Russia was called upon to play. Several days spent jointly in Munich were
filled with conversations that clarified much to both of us and brought
us personally close together The preface Parvus then wrote to the pamphlet
entered permanently into the hi'story of the Russian Revolution. In a few
pages he shed light on those social peculiarities of backward Russia which,
true enough, were already well known, but from which no one before him
had drawn all the necessary inferences.

"Political radicalism throughout Western Europe," wrote Parvus, "as
everybody knows, depended primarily on the petty bourgeoisie. These were
artisans and generally all of that part of the bourgeoisie which was caught
up by the industrial development but which at the same time was superseded
by the class of capitalists . In Russia of the pre-capitalist period cities
developed on the Chinese rather than on the European model. These were
administrative centers, purely official and bureaucratic in character devoid
of any political significance, while in the economic sense they were trade
bazaars for the landlord and peasant milieu of its environs. Their development
was still rather inconsiderable, when it was terminated by the capitalist
process, which began to establish large cities in its own image, that is,
factory towns and centers of world trade ... That which had hindered the
development of petty bourgeois democracy came to benefit the class consciousness
of the proletariat in Russia  the weak development of the artisan form
of production. The proletariat was immediately concentrated in the factories...

"Greater and greater masses of peasants will be drawn into the movement.
But all they can do is to aggravate the political anarchy already rampant
in the country and thus weaken the government; they cannot become a compact
revolutionary army. Hence, as the revolution develops, an ever greater
portion of political work will fall to the lot of the proletariat. At the
same time its political awareness will be enhanced and its political energy
will grow apace ...

"The Social-Democracy will be confronted with this dilemma: to assume
responsibility for the provisional government or to stand aloof from the
labor movement. The workers will regard that government as their own, no
matter what the attitude of the Social-Democracy. In Russia only workers
can accomplish a revolutionary insurrection. In Russia the revolutionary
provisional government will be a government of the workers' democracy.
That government will be Social-Democratic, should the Social-Democracy
be at the head of the revolutionary movement of the Russian proletariat
...

"The Social-Democratic provisional government cannot accomplish a socialist
insurrection in Russia, but the very process of liquidating the autocracy
and establishing a democratic republic will provide it with fertile ground
for political activity."

In the heyday of revolutionary events, in the autumn of 1905, I met
Parvus again, this time in Petersburg. Remaining organizationally independent
of both factions, we jointly edited Russkoye Slovo, (The Russian
Word), a newspaper for the working class masses, and, in coalition with
the Mensheviks, the important political newspaper, Nachalo (The
Beginning). The theory of permanent revolution was usually associated with
the names of "Parvus and Trotsky." That was only partially correct. Parvus
attained revolutionary maturity at the end of the preceding century, when
he marched at the head of the forces that fought so-called "Revisionism,"
i.e., the opportunistic distortions of Marx's theory But his optimism was
undermined by the failure of all his efforts to push the German Social-Democracy
in the direction of a more resolute policy. Parvus grew increasingly more
reserved about the perspectives of a socialist revolution in the West.
At the same time he felt that "the Social-Democratic provisional government
cannot accomplish a socialist insurrection in Russia." Hence, his prognosis
indicated, instead of the transformation of the democratic into the socialist
revolution, merely the establishment in Russia of a régime of workers'
democracy, more or less as in Australia, where the first labor governnent,
resting on a farmerist foundation, did not venture beyond the limits of
the bourgeois régime.

I did not share that conclusion. Australian democracy, maturing organically
on the virgin soil of a new continent, immediately assumed a conservative
character and dominated the youthful yet rather privileged proletariat.
Russian democracy, on the contrary, could come about only in consequence
of a large-scale revolutionary insurrection, the dynamics of which would
never permit the labor government to maintain itself within the framework
of bourgeois democracy. Our differences of opinion, which began soon after
the Revolution of 1905, led to a complete break at the beginning of the
war, when Parvus, in whom the skeptic had completely killed the revolutionist,
proved to be on the side of German imperialism and subsequently became
the counselor and inspirer of the First President of the German Republic,
Ebert.

After writing my pamphlet, "Until the Ninth of January," I repeatedly
returned to the development and the grounding of the theory of permanent
revolution. In view of the significance it subsequently acquired in the
intellectual evolution of the hero of this biography, it is necessary to
present it here in the form of exact quotations from my works of the years
1905 and 1906.

"The nucleus of population in a contemporary city  at least, in a city
of economic and political significance  is the sharply differentiated
class of hired labor. It is this class, essentially unknown to the Great
French Revolution, which is fated to play the decisive role in our revolution
... In an economically more backward country the proletariat may come to
power sooner than in a country more advanced capitalistically. The conception
of a kind of automatic dependence of the proletarian dictatorship on a
country' s technical forces and means is a prejudice of extremely simplified
'economic' materialism. Such a view has nothing in common with Marxism
... Notwithstanding the fact that the productive forces of United States
industry are ten times greater than ours, the political role of the Russian
proletariat, its influence on the politics of its own country and the possibility
that it may soon influence world politics are incomparably greater than
the role and significance of the American proletariat...

"It seems to me that the Russian Revolution will create such conditions
that the power may (in the event of victory, must) pass into
the hands of the proletariat before the politicians of bourgeois liberalism
will find it possible fully to un fold their genius for statecraft The
Russian bourgeoisie will surrender all the revolutionary positions to the
proletariat. It will also have to surrender revolutionary hegemony over
the peasantry. The proletariat in power will come to the peasantry as the
class liberator. The proletariat, leaning on the peasantry, will bring
into motion all the forces for raising the cultural level of the village
and for developing political consciousness in the peasantry ...

"But will not perhaps the peasantry itself drive the proletariat away
and supersede it? That is impossible. All historic experience repudiates
that supposition. It shows that the peasantry is utterly incapable of an
independent
political role ... From the aforesaid it is clear how I look upon the idea
of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.' The point is
not whether I deem it admissible in principle, whether I 'want' or 'do
not want' such a form of political co-operation. I deem it unrealizable
 at least, in the direct and immediate sense ..."

The foregoing already shows how incorrect is the assertion that the
conception here expounded "jumped over the bourgeois revolution," as has
been subsequently reiterated without end. "The struggle for the democratic
renovation of Russia ..." I wrote at the same time, "is in its entirety
derived from capitalism, is being conducted by forces formed on the basis
of capitalism, and immediately, in the first place, is directed
against the feudal and vassal obstacles that stand in the way of developing
a capitalist society." But the substance of the question was with what
forces and by which methods could these obstacles be overcome. "The framework
of all the questions of the revolution may be limited by the assertion
that our revolution is bourgeois in its objective goals and
consequently, in all its inevitable results, and it is possible at the
same time to close one's eyes to the fact that the principal active force
of that bourgeois revolution is the proletariat, which is pushing itself
toward power with all the impact of the revolution... One may comfort himself
with the thought that Russia's social conditions 'have not yet ripened
for a socialist economy  and at the same time overlook the thought that,
upon coming to power, the proletariat would inevitably, with all the logic
of its situation, push itself toward the management of the economy at the
expense of the state... Coming into the government not as helpless hostages
but as the leading force, the representatives of the proletariat will by
virtue of that alone smash the demarcation between the minimal and maximal
program i.e., place collectivism on the order of the day.
At what point in that tendency the proletariat would be stopped will depend
on the inter-relation of forces, but certainly not on the initial intentions
of the proletariat's party...

"But we may already ask ourselves: must the dictatorship of the proletariat
inevitably smash itself against the framework of the bourgeois revolution
or can it, on the basis of the existing historical situation of the world
look forward to the perspective of victory, after smashing this limiting
framework? ... One thing may be said with certainty: without the direct
governmental support of the European proletariat, the working class of
Russia will not be able to maintain itself in power and transform its temporary
reign into an enduring socialist dictatorship " But this does not necessarily
lead to a pessimistic prognosis: "the political liberation, led by the
working class of Russia, will raise the leader to a height unprecedented
in history, transmit to him colossal forces and means, and make him the
initiator of the world-wide liquidation of capitalism, for which history
has created all the objective prerequisites ..."

As to the extent to which international Social-Democracy will prove
capable of fulfilling its revolutionary task, I wrote in 1906: "The European
Socialist parties  and in the first place, the mightiest of them, the
German party  have developed their conservatism, which grows stronger
in proportion to the size of the masses embraced by socialism and the effectiveness
of the organization and the discipline of these masses. Because of that,
the Social-Democracy, as the organization that embodies the political experience
of the proletariat, may at a given moment become the immediate obstacle
on the path of an open clash between the workers and the bourgeois reaction
..." Yet I concluded my analysis by expressing the assurance that "the
Eastern revolution will infect the Western proletariat with revolutionary
idealism and arouse in it the desire to start taIking Russian' with its
enemy ..."

To sum up. Populism, like Slavophilism, proceeded from illusions that
Russia's course development would be utterly unique, escaping capitalism
and the bourgeois republic. Plekhanov's Marxism concentrated on proving
the identity in principle of Russia's historical course with that of the
West. The program that grew out of that ignored the very real and far from
mystical peculiarities of Russia's social structure and revolutionary development.
The Menshevik view of the revolution, purged of its episodic stratifications
and individual deviations, was tantamount to the following: the victory
of the Russian bourgeois revolution was possible only under the .1eadership
of the liberal bourgeoisie and must put the latter in power. Later the
democratic régime would let the Russian proletariat, with incomparably
greater success than heretofore, catch up with its elder Western brothers
on the road of the struggle for Socialism.

Lenin's perspective may be briefly expressed in the following words:
the backward Russian bourgeoisie is incapable of completing its own revolution!
The complete victory of the revolution, through the intermediacy of the
"democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry," would purge
the land of medievalism, invest the development of Russian capitalism with
American tempo, strengthen the proletariat in city and village and make
really possible the struggle for socialism. On the other hand, the victory
of the Russian revolution would give tremendous impetus to the socialist
revolution in the West while the latter would not only protect Russia from
the dangers of restoration but would also enable the Russian proletariat
to come to the conquest of power in a comparatively brief historical period.

The perspective of permanent revolution may be summarized in the following
way: the complete victory of the democratic revolution in Russia is conceivable
only in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, leaning on the
peasantry. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which would inevitably
place on the order of the day not onIy democratic but socialistic tasks
as well, would at the same time give a powerful impetus to the international
socialist revolution. Only the victory of the proletariat in the West could
protect Russia from bourgeois restoration and assure it the possibility
of rounding out the establishment of socialism.

That compact formula discloses with equal distinctness the similarity
of the latter two concepts in their irreconcilable differentiation from
the liberal Menshevik perspective as well as their extremely essential
distinction from each other on the question of the social character and
the tasks of the "dictatorship" which must grow out of the revolution.
The not infrequent complaint in the writings of the present Moscow theoreticians
that the program of the dictatorship of the proletariat was "premature"
in 1905, is beside the point. In an empirical sense the program of the
democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry proved equally
"premature." The unfavorable combination of forces at the time of the First
Revolution did not so much preclude the dictatorship of the proletariat
as the victory of the revolution in generaI. Yet all the revolutionary
groups were based on the hope of complete victory; the supreme revolutionary
struggle would have been impossible without such a hope. The differences
of opinion dealt with the general perspective of the revolution and the
strategy arising from that. The perspective of Menshevism was false to
the core: it pointed out the wrong road to the proletariat. The perspective
of Bolshevism was not complete : it correctly pointed out the general direction
of the struggle, but characterized its stages incorrectly. The insufficiency
in the perspective of Bolshevism did not become apparent in 1905 only because
the revolution itself did not undergo further development. But then at
the beginning of 1917 Lenin was obliged to alter his perspective, in direct
conflict with the old cadres of his party.

No political prognosis can pretend to be mathematically exact; suffice
it, if it correctly indicates the general line of development and helps
to orient the actual course of events, which inevitably bends the main
line right and left. In that sense it is impossible not to see that the
concept of permanent revolution has completely passed the test of history.
During the initial years of the Soviet régime no one denied that;
on the contrary, that fact found acknowledgment in a number of official
publications. But when the bureaucratic reaction against October opened
up in the calmed and cooled upper crust of Soviet society, it was at once
directed against the theory which reflected the first proletarian revolution
more completely than anything else while at the same time openly exposing
its unfinished, limited, and partial character. Thus, by way of repulsion,
originated the theory of socialism in a separate country, the basic dogma
of Stalinism.